Eric Hood of Golder Associates Ltd. notes that municipal
drinking water often doesn't meet Ontario's contaminated site cleanup standards, with
potentially serious consequences for cleanups:
"With so many challenges facing a successful site clean-up
program, it would be easy to overlook something as simple as the
drinking water that comes from your tap. But municipal drinking
water presents such challenges because the chemical composition of
this ubiquitous resource may actually be "contaminating"
based on the Ministry of Environment's new site condition
standards for groundwater.
Municipal drinking water contains trace concentrations of
specific volatile organic compounds known as
"trihalomethanes" that are formed as a result of
chlorination in water treatment plants. Chloroform is the most
common trihalomethane and according to Health Canada, the average
chloroform concentration in Canadian drinking water is 47
µg/L. The new site condition standards for
